CANBERRA: The most obvious difference is that the BCA, theoretically representing Big Business in Australia, is talking its own book the immediate self-interest of its members. The RBA and IMF are putting the bigger interests of a sustainable economy and society first.
Once upon a time, the BCA made important contributions to Australian economic reform – it was born in the 1983 formation of the Accord and for decades provided a valuable voice in policy debates.
The business lobby is at a low ebb when it can’t offer up policies capable of giving Australia the same growth dividend as a corporate tax rate from 30 to 25 per cent, and when the Republican Party is its hero. Not that it matters, but I personally think Australia will have to reduce its corporate tax rate somewhere down the track. The feared “race to the bottom” is on and we eventually will have little choice but to be in it, though it’s fine to be at the back of this particular race. Just spare me specious claims of it being all about jobs and wage rises.
Rather than grasping the nuance of genuine tax reform, of championing the need for smarter taxation, the BCA CEO, Jennifer Westacott, has nailed her lobby group’s colours to American-style lower taxes and damn the consequences.
Real tax reform that would include broadening the GST, closing down corporate and personal loopholes and rorts, ditching simply dumb taxes, offending all special interest groups and (shock!) reducing some tax rates seems to be all too hard for the BCA and coalition. Nothing is on the once-vaunted tax reform table other than the business tax cut and repeated hints of some election-centred personal income tax trimming. Given a government with no political capital left, that’s hardly surprising. At the BCA’s 25th anniversary dinner in 2008, the then-president, Greig Gailey, had a fine sentence about how the BCA was evolving:
“If I was asked to encapsulate how that role has evolved, I would characterise it as a transition from a view that ‘what is good for business is good for Australia’ to one which believes that ‘what is good for Australia is good for business’.
